This invention is related in general to conferencing systems and more specifically to devices, systems, architectures, and methods for using triggers to control workflow applications in conferences.
A typical meeting or conference may cover a large amount of content and a participant's presence may only be required for some portion of that content discussion, as opposed to the entire meeting. Such content can be a presentation format, a text document, or a media file, for example. In some conferences, the participant's presence may be required for only some categories of content. For example, sales people may only wish to attend a portion of the meeting involving a sales presentation. In other situations, a participant may only like to be present in the meeting for certain sections of the content being discussed. For example, in a slide presentation covering multiple sections, the participant may only be interested in a few of the presented slides. In another case, some contents of a meeting may be confidential such that those materials cannot be disclosed to anyone except those on an approved list.
Some conventional approaches include “camp-on” based on a conference agenda, quorum, key participants available, cell phone availability, and telephony applications (e.g., where the other end of a line is busy). However, these approaches do not address the productivity problems generally associated with having uninterested meeting participants due to the content of the meeting. In particular, such approaches may only facilitate camping-on based on timeslots, but not meeting content and/or variable meeting flow. Further, such approaches are not easily customizable or dynamically changeable to accommodate different situations. Accordingly, what is needed is a way of using “triggers” in a conference setting to control workflow applications.